Displaying less of the artist than the genius at legerdemain were Hokusai’s street tricks—almost reprehensible did we not know the dire straits to which genius is often reduced. An eager expectant crowd dogged his footsteps and watched with delighted curiosity, while he sketched landscapes, upside down, with an egg or a bottle, or a wine measure, anything that came to his hand,—changing with bewildering effect from huge figures of Chinese heroes and demigods to microscopic drawings on grains of rice, and pictures made out of chance blots of ink. His fame was noised abroad, and at last reached the ears of the Shogun, and now an unprecedented honour was conferred upon the humble apostle of the artisan, for he was summoned before the august presence to give an exhibition of his skill. The Japanese are ever imitative, and Hokusai may have borne in mind the legend of his prototype Sesshiu, an artist-priest of the fifteenth century, who sketched before the Emperor of China a marvellous dragon, with splashes from a broom plunged in ink. Still more spectacular and theatrical was Hokusai’s debut, for, spreading a sheet of paper before the feet of the monarch, he covered it with a blue wash,—then seizing a live cock, he daubed its feet with a red pigment, and let it run over the wet colour, when the Shogun and his astonished courtiers beheld a flowing stream of liquid blue, upon which appeared to float filmy segregated petals of red maple leaves. A mere trick!—unworthy of genius, we might say, but Hokusai had gauged his countrymen, and knew that his _jeu d’esprit_ would arouse and impress these aristocratic connoisseurs, jaded with ceremonial observances, more than any display of technical knowledge,—for the Japanese, as a nation, are naively childish in their love of novelty and amusement, and of the unusual and bizarre. Is it not possible that this trickery of the master may have unconsciously supplied the motive for Hiroshige’s famous print of a Yedo suburb, chosen by Professor Fenollosa, in his beautiful work on Ukiyo-ye,—where he so poetically says, “the orange fire of maples deepens the blue of marshy pools”? Space does not permit any detailed description of the compositions of Hokusai, and there is no complete catalogue of his works, the one nearest to accuracy being M. Edmond de Goncourt’s _Catalogue raisonné_. His fecundity was marvellous. He illustrated books of all kinds, poetry, comic albums, accounts of travels,—in fact his works are an encyclopedia of Japanese life. His paintings are scattered, and countless numbers lost, many being merely ephemeral drawings, thrown off for the passing pleasure of the populace. The original designs for the prints were transferred to the blocks, and lost, though the master rigidly superintended the reproduction of his works, and his wood-cutters were trained to follow the graceful sweeping curves with perfect accuracy, many of his compositions being ruled across for exact reduction.